SeaMonkey 2.26

These release notes describe system requirements, installation instructions,
and known issues for SeaMonkey 2.26 up to/including SeaMonkey 2.26.1.
These notes are updated when we receive feedback, so please check back
for new information.

Downloading

The SeaMonkey project provides official versions of SeaMonkey 2.26.1 for
Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in US English and experimental language packs for
a small variety of other languages. Community volunteers are also contributing
builds for other platforms. You can download
SeaMonkey 2.26.1 here.

System Requirements, Installation and Uninstallation

Before installing, make sure your computer meets the
system requirements.
SeaMonkey 2.26.1 will no longer offer to migrate your data from SeaMonkey 1.x
or Mozilla 1.x at the first start after installation (bug 689437).
In order to upgrade from such an old version, install the last SeaMonkey 2.0
release first, do the one-time profile upgrade, uninstall SeaMonkey 2.0 and
then install your target release (e.g. this one).
You can find more details about installation, profile data and uninstallation
in our install and uninstall
document.

Extensions (Add-ons) and Themes

Extensions installed under SeaMonkey 1.x are not migrated to SeaMonkey 2, and
may not be compatible for reinstalling in this version due to major changes in
our architecture. Please report any issues to the maintainer of the extension.
Extensions and Themes for SeaMonkey 2.26.1 can be installed from the
SeaMonkey Add-Ons website
or the "Get Add-Ons" section in the Add-ons Manager.
If you want to check whether your most important add-ons are already
compatible with the SeaMonkey version to be installed, please refer to the
SeaMonkey Add-ons
Compatibility Tracking wiki page for an overview.

Extensions with binary components such as Lightning, Enigmail and HTML Validator
only work on certain platforms (e.g. Windows). Furthermore they need to be
adjusted for each new SeaMonkey release, which also means that an old version of
such an add-on can break SeaMonkey if you disabled compatibility checking (which
e.g. happens when you install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter add-on).

For HTML Validator you need to check whether the Firefox version
that appears on SeaMonkey's about: page is listed on the 0.9x
download page. Note that only Windows is supported at this time.

Known Issues

This list covers some of the known problems with SeaMonkey 2.26.1.
Please read this before reporting any new bugs.

You cannot set up a new Sync account or pair a device anymore (bug 998807).
Workaround: Use an older version of SeaMonkey for such tasks for now.

Data loss warning: If you use a profile with this or any later
version and then try to go back to SeaMonkey 2.0, SeaMonkey will rename
your history file to places.sqlite.corrupt and create a new places.sqlite
file, effectively resetting your browsing history. This is because the
internal format changed and the upgrade process only works in one direction.
Additionally, running MailNews with local folders and POP3 mail filters may
produce summary files that are not correctly read by previous versions of
SeaMonkey. If you decide to go back to a previous version of SeaMonkey, you
should delete the .msf files for your local folders and POP3 accounts or
repair the folders using the folder properties dialog in order to avoid
potential data loss.

After creating a news account through clicking a news URL, the MailNews
account wizard may be broken (the account type will always be News). To
work around the problem, set the mail.server.serverX.valid pref (where
X is the internal number of the corresponding news account) to true in
about:config, or delete the invalid news account (bug 521861).

Web pages may appear differently in the MailNews feed reader than in the
browser (bug
662907). Workaround: Add a "noscript {display:none}" rule to your
userContent.css
(note that the Stylish add-on cannot be used here since it does not
integrate with the MailNews feed reader).

Select Element by Click doesn't flash the element in DOM Inspector on
Windows if hardware acceleration is enabled (bug 594299).

Under certain conditions, scrolling and text input may be jerky (see bug 711900).

Windows:

You may experience text rendering issues on Windows 7 with
Platform Update KB2670838 (MSIE 10 prerequisite) or on Windows 8.1 (bug 812695).
Workaround: Go to about:config, create a new boolean pref called
layout.paint_rects_separately and set it to true.

Norton/Symantec anti-virus scanners may report that some parts of
SeaMonkey (e.g. the file freebl3.dll) are suspicious. If you downloaded
SeaMonkey from one of the official download sites, this is a false
alarm. You might experience problems with secure websites when this
happens. To fix the issue, instruct your anti-virus software to
ignore these files (and move them out of quarantine) and/or switch
to another anti-virus software and reinstall SeaMonkey.

Linux:

The cursor may change to "drag & drop" mode in the mail window, causing a hang (bug 736811).

Mac:

When hardware acceleration is off, background colors in the UI
(toolbar, status bar etc.) might not update correctly when you switch
focus from/to a window. Users running Macs with certain older hardware
(e.g. Intel GMA 950) will experience this even if they haven't turned
off hardware acceleration in Preferences (Appearance/Content) (bug 626096).

Troubleshooting

Some questions are asked more frequently than others. Have a look at the SeaMonkey FAQ.
Maybe your particular problem has already been solved.

Some anti-virus software keeps detecting our installers as containing a
"Trojan" or "Downloader". This is a false positive and is some wrong
detection mechanism in the anti-virus software. The code in question is
actually from 7-Zip and decompresses the installer so that its contents can
run and install SeaMonkey. That technology is widely used and probably can
be used to compress bad as well as good software, but the 7-Zip code itself
is perfectly safe. Mozilla scans all our files routinely when putting them
on the FTP server and we assure you that our installers are as clean as the
official Firefox downloads that are scanned by the same mechanisms.

Poorly designed or incompatible extensions can cause problems with
SeaMonkey, including make it crash, slow down page display, etc.
If you encounter strange problems relating to parts of SeaMonkey no longer
working, the browser not starting, windows with strange or distorted
appearance, degraded performance, etc, you may be suffering from Extension
or Theme trouble.
Restart SeaMonkey in Safe Mode. On Windows, start using the "Safe Mode"
shortcut created in your Start menu or by running
seamonkey.exe -safe-mode. On Linux, start with
./seamonkey -safe-mode and on Mac OS X, run:

When started in Safe Mode all extensions are disabled and the Default theme
is used. Disable the Extension/Theme that is causing trouble and then start
normally.

If you uninstall an extension that is installed with your user profile
(i.e. you installed it from a Web page) and then wish to install it for all
user profiles using the -install-global-extension command line flag, you
must restart SeaMonkey once to cleanse the profile extensions datasource of
traces of that extension before installing with the switch. If you do not do
this you may end up with a jammed entry in the Extensions list and will be
unable to install the extension globally.

If you encounter strange problems relating to bookmarks, downloads, window
placement, toolbars, history, or other settings, it is recommended that you
try creating a new profile and attempting to reproduce the problem before
filing bugs. Create a new profile by running SeaMonkey with the -P command
line argument, choose the "Manage Profiles" button and then choose "Create
Profile...". Migrate your settings files (Bookmarks, Saved Passwords, etc)
over one by one, checking each time to see if the problems resurface. If you
do find a particular profile data file is causing a problem, file a bug and
attach the file.

Frequently Asked Questions

What can I do to help?

We need help from developers and the testing community to provide as much
feedback as possible to make SeaMonkey even better. Please read these notes
and the bug
filing instructions before reporting any bugs to
Bugzilla. You can also give us
your feedback through this feedback
form.

Why haven't you responded to the mail I sent you?

Use the newsgroup.
The SeaMonkey team reads it regularly, and your email may have gotten lost.

Lots of people. See Help->About SeaMonkey, contributors for a
list of some of the people who have contributed to Mozilla and SeaMonkey.

Where's the SeaMonkey 2.26.1 source code?

A tarball of the SeaMonkey 2.26.1 source code is available at the
download page.
The latest development code can be obtained from the
source
repository.
SeaMonkey-specific source is in the "suite" directory. Please follow the
build
instructions.

Other Resources and Links

The following resources contain useful information about SeaMonkey 2.26.1: